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Jose Garcia had been living in his RV for six years and growing tired of the life.
“Big problems with the police in the last year,” he said. “Sometimes come the police and say we can’t stay more. I change a lot of cities.”
At his last stop he got a $130 citation.
Then, with Los Angeles County ramping up its efforts to remove some of the thousands of recreational vehicles parked on its streets, a sympathetic sheriff’s deputy told Garcia there was a place where he could park legally.
Garcia now resides on a parking lot in the Crenshaw District — L.A. County’s first safe parking location for RVs.
The one-year, $900,000 pilot project opened in November on county property vacated by the Probation Department when it moved to Downey in 2019.
Thirteen RVs now occupy the lot, with one space yet to be filled. Their owners will be able to stay there for up to six months while they pursue permanent housing. All have agreed to surrender their vehicles if and when they get it.
Safe parking is one facet of the county’s Pathway Home encampment resolution program. In 29 operations since its launch in August 2023, Pathway Home has removed 624 recreational vehicles from the streets while moving nearly 1,100 people into interim and permanent housing.
“We tried to be creative with people living in RVs,” county Supervisor Holly Mitchell said while sharing a breakfast with its residents in December. Mitchell spearheaded the project in response to a plethora of RVs parked in her district. The 2,245 RVs in the most recent homeless count accounted for a third of the county total.
“Those that are living in RVs that the van lords are renting to them, charging them ridiculous amounts of money for something that really isn’t habitable, we are really trying to help those people transition to a different form of housing and get those RVs out of there,” she said.
The safe parking is for a small subset of those RV dwellers who meet two criteria: Their vehicles must be operable, and they must have proof of ownership.
The former Probation Department lot offers a hideaway bounded by Crenshaw and Obama boulevards and the Expo Line and is sealed off from a row of apartment buildings to its west by a tall wall and shrubbery.
For its residents, the lot is an extension of the low-cost and independent life they had, with improvements such as three meals delivered daily and a trailer with showers and toilets.
That’s a plus for Maria Valencia, 62, who never used what she called the “poopy” in her 10 years parking on the streets of East Los Angeles. She showered in the RV but used the toilets of restaurants and businesses.
Mitchell said that the one-year program could be extended but that the site of the pilot will eventually be replaced by an affordable housing development.
Mitchell said she hopes the parking lot will inspire others by then.
“While it may not feel like it makes a dent in the 2,000, it will be significant for these 14,” Mitchell said. “And this is the first. We need to have multiple safe parking spots I believe all over L.A. County as one of the tools in our tool kit.”
Four of the spaces will be reserved for RV dwellers from Los Angeles City Council District 10, and the remainder will come from unincorporated portions of Mitchell’s 2nd District.
The county contracted with End Homelessness California to provide food service, housing navigation and security. Operating as the Shower of Hope, it also runs 24 mobile showers, provides housing for 45 community college students in leased homes and manages two safe parking locations for automobiles.
Unlike safe parking for automobiles, which is open only overnight and requires vehicles to leave during the day, the lot will be open 24 hours a day. Electrical hookups are provided, and a mobile bathroom will remain on-site. RV owners can come and go, but the goal is for the vehicles to stay put.
“We really want them to stay because you don’t want a lot of traffic in a lot like this,” said Mel Tillekeratne, co-founder and executive director of the Shower of Hope. “The goal is they stay here. We just want to make sure we engage them as much as possible so we can get them into housing.”
That’s not a drawback for Valencia.
“If they let us stay here, I’ll be happy to stay forever,” she said. “I’m happy here. I don’t have to worry about the rent, the bills, the bills, the bills. When I had my apartment, every day the same thing. Even when I paid the rent, I was worried for the next month, working here, working there, working everywhere.”
As yet, there is no track record on how quickly residents will move on. Both Garcia and Valencia are looking forward to having their own apartments, but it will be hard giving up the homes they’ve grown attached to.
Garcia, who has lived in the U.S. without legal status for 30 years, has had to forgo his apartment search while his case manager helps him gets identification.
Valencia said she is in line to get a rental subsidy and start an apartment search but isn’t looking forward to surrendering the RV.
“It will hurt me a lot,” Valencia said. “Because this is beautiful. This is wonderful.”
